


Sticky Fingers

by iblankedonmyname



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Demonic Powers, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, First Kiss, First Time, Kissing, M/M, One Shot, Public Hand Jobs, Smut, Spoilers, a small offering of smut, i wish, in a thousand more bearimies, or maybe not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:54:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27663676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iblankedonmyname/pseuds/iblankedonmyname
Summary: Sticky Fingers (idiom):The tendency to keep (or steal) an object you touch. Or a crude joke about hand jobs.*Post-show spoilers* After Michael’s decision, Shawn pays him a visit.
Relationships: Michael/Shawn (The Good Place)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 82





	Sticky Fingers

**Author's Note:**

> Oh look some of my favorite dichotomies, a good boy/a bad boy/they don't know they are gay/they're acted by old men. There wasn't enough sexy gay shit with these too homoerotically-charged demons, so I wrote it.

Shawn learned that Michael had decided to become a human around the Bad Place’s water cooler. It wasn’t actually filled with water, but an antimatter that was so horrid an immortal entity would either shit or throw up within exactly twenty minutes of drinking it. The Bad Place didn’t actually exist anymore either, but no one had come up with any better way of describing “the place where humans go to get tested”. Purgatory Place? No, too much alliteration. Besides Shawn was a bit of a traditionalist. He liked his vomit-inducing antimatter served black, as well as his suits poop-brown and badly tailored. His eyebrow cruelly arched. 

That’s because he would always be a demon regardless of how sort of ‘nice’ he was feeling since the Judge’s big decision to overhaul the Good Place/Bad Place system, some hundreds of bearimies ago.

But, Shawn digressed, back to the water cooler. The demons spreading the gossip were two low-ranking sludge pushers. This was upsetting because Shawn thought he was the center of gossip around the updated Bad Place, but the fact that Vicky had told Cindy who told Accounting who offhandedly mentioned it to a crowd of actors in a test for some asshole named Henry Kissinger and not Shawn, made Shawn royally irritated. It really took the enjoyment out of vomiting exactly twenty minutes later.

Regardless, Shawn needed to find out if the rumor mill was full of shit or not, so he called up a Bad Janet.

“Duh, it’s true,” Janet smacked her gum. Like all Bad Janets her leggings were too tight, her eye make-up too thick, and her blonde hair styled too New-Jersey-shore.

“But how’s that possible?” groused Shawn, who was completely disgusted a Bad Place architect that became a Good Place architect would finally choose to live as a simple ugly human. Shawn hoped he was something as lame as a customer support agent now.

“That annoying little lady asked the Judge. Apparently, Michael got bored.”

“Bored?” Shawn frowned. How could Michael have gotten bored? Shawn thought he was interfering with Michael just enough to keep their patented animosity fresh and exciting without becoming overbearing or a huge time suck. But in reflection, perhaps Shawn had gotten distracted lately. Work was always busy around the holidays.

“Yeah, man, and guess who else you’re boring now?” Janet blipped away in a cloud of her own fart.

 _Classic Bad Janet_.

So Michael really did become a human? Sounded awful. Shawn imagined Michael with ingrown hairs, eye veins, and jiggly organs. He probably smelled now, not that Shawn could _smell_ , but think of the feet! Shawn had to see it. He fetched the recovered keys to Earth’s portal and left the Bad Place.

The door deposited him in Los Angeles, an adequate Earth hell for a second hand, washed-up, retired demon indeed. _Michael._ What a sham. What a loser. Living in what? Pasadena. Who did he think he was, _Meryl Streep_?

Shawn felt the waves of broken dreams blow in from Hollywood, and the ennui of the bored and wealthy surround him like an inescapable whirlpool. He reveled in it for one second before shaking off the demonic residue to return to his normal disinterested annoyance. Even in the mess of wrongs committed in LA, Shawn could follow the weak, Bad Place essence flaking off Michael. After all, a demon that became a human was a big wrong. Shawn prowled the sidewalk like a bloodhound until he was directed into an open-air bar.

He scanned the place carefully until his eyes settled on his prey. Michael was drinking a glass of red and reading a book at a small metal patio table with a convenient second seat, stupidly unaware of the menace casting its glare in his direction. It was the perfect time to make an unwanted interjection, one of Shawn’s favorites.

“Hey idiot, you got a stain on your shirt.”

Before Shawn’s statement, Michael’s gingham collared shirt was pristine, however, after Shawn’s surprising appearance, Michael dribbled a good portion of the latest swallow of wine down his front.

“Shawn!” Michael grit back, “What are you doing here! You can’t be here.”

“On the contrary,” Shawn took Michael’s acknowledgment of him as an invitation to sit, “I have more right being here than you. Demons can come and go whenever from Earth, but a demon masquerading as a human...tch. Don’t make me laugh.” Shawn put on his smarmiest, ickiest grins.

Michael dabbed at his shirt stains with a napkin before promptly giving up. Shawn’s smile became sharper, more dogtooth.

“Did you really think you could come to Earth as a human without me learning about it? I am the eyes and ears of the Bad Place. The judge and I go way… is that a _Tide Pen_!” Shawn’s voice uncharacteristically cracked.

Shawn was drawing out the stain on his shirt with, yes, surprise-surprise, a tide pen.

“Aren’t they great! I mean, look at that?” The stain was practically gone, a small pink halo was all that was left of the wine on the obnoxious gingham. Michael, with his pristine white hair and dopey peaceable smile, almost made Shawn slap the entire wine glass into Michael’s lap. “Humans and their ingenuity. Truly incredible.” 

“Yeah, well,” Shawn stumbled for a moment so caught up in his ideation of spilling the remaining wine, “you’ll never be! And when your pitiful human life ends you’ll be trapped in the labyrinth of your own making, forced to take a test that you’ll never be able to pass for all eternity, because deep down, you know, you’re bad. And when you’re there, I’ll be there too. Hey— where do you think you’re going!?” 

“I’m leaving,” Michael said with a blatant cheeriness. “See you next week, Tim!” He waved to the bartender, who waved back, before tucking his book under his arm.

Shawn hissed indignantly when Michael left without him so he followed him out of the restaurant, nearly stomping his shoe heels. “Doesn’t any of this concern you? You’re weak now. Fragile. Inhabiting the body of a lesser being. You’re going to age. Wither away to powder. Your mind is going to fall apart.” Shawn pursued him for half a block listing any symptom of mortality he could think of. Humans were so flawed, so ripe for insult. 

Eventually, Michael stopped and turned on Shawn. “You know, I can always trust that no matter what happens to me, you’ll always be the same, Shawn.”

Shawn sucked his teeth. “Is that your idea of an insult?”

“Are you insulted?” Michael considered him with a pensive, but insufferably soft, half-smile.

“No! I take pride in being an immortal being, dipshit!” Shawn scoffed, “Immortal. Immutable. Unchangeable. Get it?”

“Mhmm, yep,” 

Michael continued to walk and Shawn didn’t care where, he'd follow him. He was here for one purpose, to figure out how to harass Michael, something that was always entertaining ever since Michael sweetened up to humanity. Since Michael was resisting Shawn’s reminders of his new mortality, he changed tack. Something that should work on a middle-aged male regardless of their status as an ex-demon.

“So you were all alone back in that bar, huh? I was hoping I was interrupting something,” Shawn whispered nastily.

“I wasn’t on a date, Shawn. I go to read there every Tuesday. It's fun to keep a schedule. Tim knows me. I’m a regular.” Michael leaned down to Shawn’s slightly shorter human suit and whispered to him in a thrilling voice, “Sometimes he even gives me a free glass of wine.”

Shawn’s lips twisted down. He momentarily thought Michael was going to tell him something juicy, so imagine his disappointment, “What’s the fun in that?”

“Because it’s unexpected! An expected routine creates unexpected results. What’s more human than that! Besides, the whole concept of dating and then maybe sex sounds…” Michael shivered, “still grotty. Maybe I’ll grow out of that eventually. From what I’ve heard, human bodies and sex are great. Like...you’ve never experienced a glass of wine, but wow, once you get past the fact that it's really putrid grapes and get your first warm, tingly buzz.” Michael hummed happily.

“Wine is really, _really_ putrid grapes,” Shawn corrected, “and unsurprisingly, that’s disgusting and something a demon can easily torture someone with.”

Michael hummed the same note again but more optimistic than before. “So you say.”

“Yes, I say.” Shawn stopped in front of Michael. Michael tried to go around him but Shawn stopped him there too with a hand, inches from his gingham-wrapped chest. “That’s a dumb trade. Immortality gone so you can _try a little bit of wine the human way_.”

“Are you going to follow me all the way home, Shawn? Think of how many bearimies have passed in the afterlife while you’ve been here? You’ve probably missed so much already. Why don’t you come back tomorrow?” 

And like any human would, Michael reached out and touched Shawn’s hand to remove it from his chest, which if Michael was still a demon, wouldn’t have done anything. However, Michael wasn’t a demon anymore. Humans don’t generally like touching demons. Michael didn’t. It felt like petting a flaming sea urchin. 

“Ow!” Micheal shook the sharp feeling out of his fingers and blew on his blistered palm.

Shawn realized immediately that he was going about this torture in completely the wrong way. Mentally Shawn wasn’t getting much leverage on Michael, because Michael still possessed a mind familiar with demons, but he no longer possessed a body that was resistant to them. Shawn rubbed his fingers to conjure up something devious, like fire ants, and grabbed onto Michael's bicep.

Michael hissed painfully and slapped Shawn’s hand away. On the defensive now, he dropped his book and scurried into a nearby dumpster alley.

“Shawn,” Michael attempted to reason with him. Michael was the only entity Shawn knew of that could make pleading sound condescending. “Physical suffering is pretty basic torture, don’t you think?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes remembering I still rule at the basics is,” Shawn sighed, “part of a good day.” 

He caught Michael’s outward wrist in his bare hand and imagined the nasty sting of a jellyfish he was forcing into Michael’s dumb human synapses. Shawn trapped him against the alley’s wall, transmitting an arrangement of discomfort into Michael’s mortal form. Michael was breathing rapidly and sweating. Shawn enjoyed every second of it. 

Shawn tried an assortment of sensations; poison oak rash, putting down a cherished pet, kitchen grease burns while making bacon without pants, and being unable to settle a child screaming in a department store. Before Shawn got cocky and tried a different route entirely, but equally sinful; lusting for someone you shouldn’t.

Michael’s breath stuttered. 

_Winner winner chicken dinner._

Shawn decided to expand on that idea a little, really lean into the hellish fantasy of desiring what one can’t have. How the _feelings_ for them seem never-ending. Inescapable. No matter how many nights leave the tortured tossing and turning in damp miserable sheets that fact won’t change. They cannot have who they want to have.

Michael groaned, his eyes screwed shut. He struggled weakly against Shawn’s grip. It was futile anyway. Shawn was an eternal creature born from the fires that birthed the universe. No human could escape his grip. If Michael wanted Shawn to stop, he was going to have to clam up or pass out because Shawn was having far too much fun now.

“Think about skin on skin, Michael,” Shawn whispered to Michael’s hammering pulse leaping in his neck. “Think about the feeling of aborted release when you really want something, and it's denied. Again. And again. And again.”

This was the moment things got weird. Michael’s other hand shot out and fisted itself in the waist of Shawn’s ugly blazer. Shawn raised a questioning eyebrow at the reaction, therefore missing the moment when Michael’s mouth descended on his own.

Shawn snorted into Michael. Demons didn’t _makeout_. Not that Shawn had anything to compare this to, but the word ‘eager’ came to mind. Michael was _eager_. It must suck to be in the body of a seventy-year-old virgin. Whatever. When had Shawn ever used his tongue on anything? Now was as good a time as any. To say the least, it wasn’t terrible. Shawn really wished it was more terrible.

They were now, definitely, two man-shaped things making out against a wall in an alley. Michael was making some deliciously desperate sounds, which Shawn swallowed like a starved animal. Shawn felt like an ocean wave rolling a tiny ship in its wake. As a wave, he could be as cruel or merciful as he chose to be. Tonguing was also pretty wet. Shawn hadn’t expected that. He pressed Michael further against the brick wall using two impossibly strong hands and his thigh. When Shawn’s hips collided with Michael’s, Michael moaned into his open mouth. 

Shawn wanted to laugh hysterically on the spot. He was going to bring back literally _the juiciest_ gossip ever to the Bad Place’s water cooler. Michael had an erection, and it was decidedly rubbing against the hip crease of Shawn’s human suit. Shawn didn’t even have an interest in this kind of torture, but what a freaking incredible time to discover a new skill. Without breaking away from whatever their mouths’ were doing, Shawn unzipped Michael’s fly and firmly stroked his hardon.

Michael wheezed lightly. Shawn knew from years of torturing old men that they hated being reminded of their inconsistent ability to get and stay hard, but Michael didn’t seem to have this problem. His cock was very hard, warm, and getting wetter each time Shawn worked his fist from tip to base. Michael broke away from Shawn’s mouth to gasp, to throw his head back in a state of oncoming ecstasy.

Shawn stilled his hand on Michael’s manhood and immediately got the reaction he wanted, Michael whimpered. He tried to wiggle against Shawn’s grip, but to no avail. Shawn was immobile.

Michael whimpered again and his forehead collapsed against Shawn’s shoulder.

“Don’t stop…” Michael muttered dejectedly. He was shivering with his unmet release.

“You’re begging wrong,” Shawn murmured back, “humans beg me to stop torturing them, not the other way around.”

“Please stop…?” Michael groaned.

“You suck at begging.” But Shawn did resume pulsing his fist up and down Michael’s length. He was focusing intently on the tiny sharp breaths Michael was taking into his neck until they were large wet breaths that sounded very similar to ‘oh oh oh’ and then finally ‘ahhhhh’. Michael’s whole body twitched before sinking slackly against Shawn.

Shawn withdrew his hand from Michael’s pants now shellacked with goo. 

_Yup. Grotty._

He cleaned the goo off on Michael’s pants, and with far too much generosity for a single visit to Earth, zipped him up.

“Whelp,” Shawn righted Michael briskly back against the wall. His eyes were confusedly clouded. He had a very undignified, relaxed smile. Shawn chose somewhere else to look. “That was...educational, but I think we both know...I won this.”

“Uh-huh.” Michael sighed, “Sure, whatever.”

Shawn tugged his blazer down to straighten out the creases and coughed.

“Next time I visit it will only be worse.”

“Oh good,” Michael drawled before his eyes cleared slightly, “I mean, oh no.”

Shawn frowned. He should be feeling fantastic, but instead, he felt odd, like he didn’t have a full understanding of what just happened. It was no big deal. He’d feel terrific as soon as he returned to the water cooler to spill the beans that Michael, ex-demon, forever imbecile, kissed him or that Shawn made Michael cum. His decision made, Shawn turned away and left Michael alone in the Pasadena alley.

However, as soon as he returned to the Bad Place, Shawn changed his mind. It might _not be fun_ to tell anyone what happened on his recent visit to Earth.


End file.
